


Sundown

by Sineala



Category: Ancient History RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, IN SPACE!, Negotiations, Omens & Portents, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-14 16:58:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9194843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: The night before the Battle of Zama, Hannibal and Scipio meet. On a spaceship. They're in space.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenofspade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/gifts).



> I stole almost all the dialogue from Livy. Sorry, Livy.

It is dark outside the viewport, the vast darkness of space, but even now the gods do not abandon them: thousands of stars burn, pinpricks in the dark. It is Carthage's fire, Hannibal thinks. It is his own fire, his zeal, his drive to defeat Rome.

They dropped out of hyperspace at the fringes of the Zama system three hours ago, and Hannibal thinks that perhaps the flame within him has begun to waver.

He has come to surrender to his enemy, to Scipio himself, because he finds he cannot bear the thought of giving himself up to another.

They have met here on a neutral ship, a trader's ship. Scipio regards him with the quiet sureness of a man who knows he is already a victor.

The Romans have more ships than they do. The Romans have always had more ships, but even so, he was cleverer than they -- in the Trasimene system, and then dodging through the asteroid belt to englobe the Romans in the Cannae system. And now, he thinks, his cleverness will not save him. Oh, he has his "elephants" -- or so his soldiers call the warships, affectionately. They are huge ships, heavily armed, but they lumber as beasts do, and they are slow to change course.

Scipio is still watching him, waiting for him to speak. He touches the translator earbud in his ear. His uniform is ostentatious -- gold and red-purple, still the Romans' favored colors, even in a spacers' suit. Hannibal watches him with both his eyes: the new eye, the artificial one, gives him medical data. Temperature. Respiration. Heart rate. Scipio is calm.

"It was I who first began this war against the Roman people," Hannibal says, and Scipio blinks once, placidly.

Scipio says nothing.

He explains how he seeks peace now; he offers to concede the systems they fought over. Sicily. Sardinia. Spain. The inhabited asteroids of those systems, dotting the emptiness of space like islands in the Greeks' old wine-dark sea.

Scipio waits for an interminable ten seconds after Hannibal shuts his mouth, as if giving him the opportunity to change his mind.

And then Scipio begins to speak. The translation into Phoenician scrolls across the bottom of Hannibal's field of vision; the ship's computers can access the optical wiring of his new eye. Convenient. Perhaps, he considers, this is adequate compensation for having lost the original eye.

"You have acknowledged," Scipio is saying, "and the gods are witness to the truth of what you say, that you are the aggressors. Justice and the laws of heaven gave us victory in Sicily; they have given us victory in the recent war; and they will do so again if we fight here."

He is saying no.

He talks. He says that perhaps, had Hannibal not violated the armistice, that he might have considered it.

"Prepare for war," he says, and Hannibal hears the strange, harsh words of Latin: _para bellum_.

Hannibal nods curtly, and as Scipio rises, Hannibal finds himself wishing that things had been different. He cannot wish they were not at war with Rome; that, he had sworn as a child. But perhaps if Scipio had been born in a Carthaginian system, they might have been friends. They might have served together, and voyaged across the galaxy. It is not to be.

And then Scipio is gone.

* * *

It is ship's morning by the time Hannibal finally reaches the flagship of his fleet. They will attack in an hour.

"Sir," the officer at the sensor monitors says. He is young. They are all so young. "We're receiving reports of a supernova. Multiple supernovas. No danger to us, of course, they're far away, but--"

Hannibal shuts his eyes and breathes out.

An omen. An omen for Scipio's victory.

The stars flare brightly now, but soon they will dim and blacken. The stars are going out. The gods abandon them.

And yet, they will fight. They must.

He imagines Scipio is on his own ship, his Roman ship, divining his future from the omen as his ancestors watched the flights of birds or examined the entrails of sheep.

He imagines Scipio smiling, victorious.

"Battlestations," Hannibal says, the way he has always said it these many years, and he knows it's for the last time.

**Author's Note:**

> [Obligatory Tumblr post](http://sineala.tumblr.com/post/155930780409/fic-sundown).


End file.
